The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [161]
She was calmed by her torrent of words. Then her wrath turned to Florent for causing all this. She turned to the inspector and justified herself. “I didn't know, Monsieur. He looked so gentle, he fooled us. I didn't want to listen to the gossip—they're all so malicious. He came to give the child lessons, and then he left. Sometimes I fed him, and often I gave him a good fish as a gift. That's all. But that's the last time I'll let myself be used for my kindness.”
“But surely he gave you some papers to keep for him?” the inspector asked.
“No, I swear he didn't. I wouldn't care. I'd give you the papers. I've had it, you know? I don't enjoy watching you search through my things. Enough, it's pointless.”
The police, who had examined every piece of furniture in the room, now wanted to go to the little nook where Muche slept. For a few minutes now, the child, awakened by the commotion, had been crying, no doubt thinking that someone had come to slit his throat.
“This is my child's room,” said the Norman, opening the door.
Muche, completely naked, ran up and threw his arms around her neck. She calmed him down and put him in her own bed. The police came out of his room very quickly. The inspector had just decided to leave when the child, still crying, whispered in his mother's ear. “They're going to take my exercise books! Don't let them have my exercise books!”
“Ah, that's right! There are the notebooks. Wait, I'll give them to you, just to show you I have nothing to hide. Look, his writing is in here. You can hang him for all I care, and it won't be me who cuts him down.”
She handed over Muche's notebooks with the writing samples. But the child got up from the bed in a rage, biting and scratching his mother, who shoved him down with a smack. He began to scream. At the doorway, Mademoiselle Saget was stretching her neck. She had come in, finding all the doors open, and asked Mère Méhudin if she could be of some help. She watched and listened and felt bad for these women without defenders. Meanwhile, the inspector was reading the handwriting specimens with great seriousness. Words such as “tyrannically” and “liberticide” and “anti-constitutional” and “revolutionary” made him frown. Then he read the sentence “When the hour strikes, the guilty shall fall.” He tapped the page and said, “This is serious, very serious.”
He gave the exercise books to one of his men, and then he was gone. Claire, who up to this point had not appeared, opened the door and watched the men leave. Then she entered into her sister's room for the first time in a year. Mademoiselle Saget seemed to be very friendly with the Norman; she was fussing over her, pulling the ends of the shawl to make sure she was well covered, and letting her discharge her anger with great sympathy.
“You're a complete coward,” Claire said, facing her.
The Norman rose to her feet, furious, and let the shawl slip off.
“You lying snitch!” she shouted. “Say that again!”
“You're a complete coward,” the young woman repeated in an even more sneering tone.
Then the Norman swung her arm all the way from behind and smacked Claire in the face so hard that she turned horribly pale as the Norman jumped on her and dug her fingernails into her neck. They wrestled a moment, pulling each other's hair, trying to strangle each other. The younger sister, frail as she was, violently pushed the older one with such superhuman strength that they both crashed into the wardrobe, shattering the mirror. Muche was sobbing, and the mother was shouting for Mademoiselle Saget to help separate them. But Claire pulled herself away, saying, “Coward, coward. I'm going to warn that poor man that you have betrayed him.”
Her mother blocked the doorway. The Norman grabbed her from behind. With the help of Mademoiselle Saget, the three pushed her back into her own room, where they managed to double-lock the door, despite her furious struggle. She kicked at the